Monday, 29 September 2008

Came across this excellent YouTube in which David Warlick summarises his November 2007 Alaska School Boards Association presentation in November 2007, about the 21st century literacy landscape: it rings a lot of Information Literacy bells. In only 9 minutes he manages to get across the core of his presentation.Terrific.

David Warlick is the president of the Landmark Project, a consulting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. His website receives more than ten million visits a month from educators accessing some of the most popular teacher tools available on the Internet. He is author of three books on instructional technology and 21st century literacy.

Monday, 15 September 2008

I did a presentation, at last Friday's Caught in the Web seminar organised by ARLIS, which is embedded below. I also updated the Netvibes page that I had created in July. The Netvibes page has links etc. about social networking particularly and also about Web 2.0 in general: http://www.netvibes.com/sheilawebber

Wednesday, 10 September 2008

Jonny Dailey has created some great short introductory videos. They use Vimey, which I haven't come across before. Reminded me slightly of FAME type students (the New York performing arts TV show not that database). Also reminded me of the wonderful breakfast we once had in a diner in Broadway, New York where the waiters sang to us. Finally it also reminded me that when I got bored of delivering the Library stuff at large inductions I sometimes used to sing the words from the last slide. It always got a clap.But these kids are really good. I enjoyed it and might even use it with some of my groups.

My friends and I were asked to create 3 videos for my college library. Here is #1.This is a music video with simplicity in mind. When we show it around campus, and to other schools, many people find it catchy. The remaining videos will be posted as they are created.We wrote and produced the song on a Sunday afternoon using a very cheap microphone and some good 'ol imagination. The video was shot in one day on campus."

Time to Listenis a powerful little film about Web generation students (particularly schools)

"Our students live in a global, digital world that many of us could never have imagined. A world that has been transformed and will continue to be, in part, due to technology. Of course, societies have always been in a constant state of transformation due to human ingenuity, but I bet we can all agree that the pace and scope of transformation is accelerating due to the technologies surrounding us. Many of today’s students are most comfortable using laptops, instant messaging, chat rooms, and cell phones to connect to friends, family, and persons with knowledge or content they desire in local communities and around the globe. Given the speed at which change is occurring, we must listen to our students and act to meet them where they want to learn. By The Way, they do want us to listen. Watch and see…."Be sure and watch all the way to the end!

Before I set up this blog I considered using a wiki for collecting information on how Web 2.0 was being used in our Information Literacy interventions. I doubted whether anyone would add their stuff to a wiki, so I went for a blog. I am sure that out there many of us are trying out the various tools and it would be great to hear about this. Why not put a comment after this post or e-mail me godwin.peter@gmail.com

Here are two recent blog posts which draw on the experiences in our book :

Alisa Miller has compiled a useful collection of 100 videosunder headings like arts. PE, education and technology, special needs, creative techniques, videos made by students : most applicable to school librarians.

Delizzy may be useful to you as an index for all your content in delicious. Phil Bradley drew attention to this recently. Personally I find the search facility on delicious satisfactory, but if you don't try delizzy!

Wednesday, 3 September 2008

Virtualenquiry is "the website for the UK Virtual Enquiry project. We're looking at how instant messaging software is being used in today's University and College Libraries as a support and communication tool" They are funded by SLIC (Scottish Libraries and Information Council) and partnered by Carnegie College and Napier University. The site is newish and at the moment they have a survey about virtual enquiries that they'd like people to complete. http://www.virtualenquiry.net/

Continuing the virtual theme, the Second Life (SL) Educators conference is taking place in Tampa this week. I'm giving a paper Using first and second life to develop inquiry skills in the freshman year at a UK university: a happy blend? - but in the virtual parallel conference being held in Second Life itself. At the main conference there are a couple of papers about librarians experiences/role in SL. The conference wiki is at http://sledcc.wikispaces.com/ and there are likely to be full papers up in due course.

Tuesday, 2 September 2008

Chapter proposals are being sought for a book entitled "Collaborative Information Literacy Assessments", to be published in 2009 by Neal-Schuman Publishers. This book will include chapters co-authored by librarian and faculty teams about successful information literacy assessment initiatives in a variety of disciplines. Chapters need to be co-authored by a librarian and a faculty member.This book will be co-edited by Thomas P. Mackey, Ph.D., Associate Dean at the Center for Distance Learning at Empire State College, SUNY and Trudi E. Jacobson, M.L.S., Head of User Education Programs, University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY.Please send proposals of 1-2 pages to Tom Mackey at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu no later than October 17, 2008. Chapter selections will be made and authors notified by November 10, 2008. First drafts of the completed chapters (25-30 pages) will be due on January 30, 2009. Final drafts will be due by April 20, 2009. If you have any questions about proposal ideas or about the book please contact Tom Mackey via email.

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This blog will give the editors, Peter Godwin and Jo Parker, and the contributors to share news and comment about developments over coming months. It will also replace Peter's previous blog "Information Literacy meets Web 2.0".